Liberty conference comes to UNC

During a week centered around the battle between Democrats and Republicans, students from all over the Southeast convened on UNC’s campus Saturday to attend a conference on libertarianism.

The conference was one of 15 Students For Liberty Conferences held this fall around the nation.

It was the third conference held in North Carolina — but the first at UNC.

More than 100 students came from Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia, as well as from around the state.

David Deerson, co-president of UNC’s Young Americans for Liberty chapter, said those involved had two main goals.

The first one, he said, was “to run a conference that is educational for students so that they have a greater understanding of liberty.”

The second goal was to let students meet each other and network, Deerson said.

The conference consisted of a series of lectures on liberty and the role of government, and included speakers such as David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, and Fred Smith, president and founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Mobin Koohestani, a freshman at Wake Forest University who works as a Students For Liberty campus coordinator, helped facilitate the event.

As campus coordinator, Koohestani is responsible for connecting various political groups on Wake Forest’s campus with Students For Liberty, a national organization.

“Essentially, we create alliances with people from all parts of the spectra,” Koohestani said.

“We’ll send them resources. We’ll send them information. So then they become part of our network.”

Georg Vanberg, a UNC political science professor, spoke at the conference on the topic of majority rule and popular will.

Vanberg argued that democracy does not necessarily promote the beliefs and opinions of a society, it merely works to limit tyranny by giving every citizen an opportunity to veto policies he or she might not like.

“Democracy does not embody the belief of the popular will,” Vanberg said.

“The particular method by which you make a decision is going to be determinative of the outcome.”

The straight-forward American voting process, which presents individuals with two scenarios from which they must choose, limits the voice of the people, Vanberg argued.

But those scenarios, he said, might not correlate to the desires of a society.

Daniela Madriz, a member of the UNC Young Americans For Liberty, has attended a number of Student For Liberty conferences.

She said she was moved by Vanberg’s speech.

“I thought it was very interesting, I thought he was very well prepared. He gave us a holistic view of public choice theory,” Madriz said.

“Professor Vanberg’s speech really sparked my curiosity on topics I otherwise would not have thought about.”

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